Fireless Cooking

RIVALRY -- Sarah Warder MacConnell--Macaulay ($2). Two sisters, petty-vicious, put a docile plot through its paces. It must be shown that Julia is vain and envious, so she meets her fiance's mistress. Elena, the homely sister, must be thwarted, so she is crippled for life the very moment her dancing wins applause. She marries an artistic wanderer, who then dies. At home she finds Julia also a widow. They settle down to an earnest sisterly tussle for admiration and happiness, envy matching envy with competitive malice. Julia still has money and looks, so the reader's sympathy is meant to go to crippled, homely, honest Elena. But Elena is more shrewish than shrewd. Her experiments with new religions are wan and woeful. The backgrounds --Manhattan, Italy, unnamed places --are nebulously uninteresting, taking the edge off such intensity as Authoress MacConnell and her characters may possess. A ripe theme and much good characterization go to waste through fireless cooking.